


interlude: wicked beast, dreaming of roses

by niuu



Series: interlude: a retelling of fairytales [3]
Category: Beauty and the Beast - All Media Types, Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, La Belle et la Bête | Beauty and the Beast (Fairy Tale), Original Work
Genre: 1700s France, Character Study, Curses, F/F, Fairy Tale Retellings, Hopeful Ending, Internalized Transphobia, Love, Roses, Transgender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:54:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27063733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/niuu/pseuds/niuu
Summary: I hide behind a beast's skin and spin daydreams from a castle of stone. Year after year, the roses are nourished by blood, tears, and the heart of a girl who was meant to become a king.
Relationships: Belle | Beauty/La Bête | Beast (La Belle et la Bête)
Series: interlude: a retelling of fairytales [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1902544
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	interlude: wicked beast, dreaming of roses

**Author's Note:**

> Lines inspired by quotes: 
> 
> "My loneliness ages like wine."  
> — **Therese Awwad** , Women of the Fertile Crescent: An Anthology of Modern Poetry by Arab Women (ed. & trans. Kamal Boullata).
> 
> "I know it must be this way  
> in the waking world  
> but how cruel —  
> even in my dreams  
> we hide from each other’s eyes."  
> — **Ono No Komachi** , from After a Lover Visited in Secrecy; The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems (tr. by Jane Hirshfield & Mariko Aratani).
> 
> "Year after year the cherry tree nourished by fallen blossoms."  
> — **Basho**.
> 
> " — and also I am the leaves and the blossoms, and, like them, I am full of delight, and shaking."  
> — **Mary Oliver** , excerpt of "Summer Story," in Red Bird.
> 
> "Your love, a sword made of moonlight and blood."  
> — **Erica Jong** , from Becoming Light: New & Selected Poems; "Gazing Out, Gazing In."
> 
> "A blood-song, a song in the blood, a shivering up and down the spine, from a time before words outsped their meaning."  
> — **Deborah Randall** , from Poems; "The Hare," written c. September 1973.
> 
> "Desire for your bright hands / in the half-shadow of the flame: / they smelled of oak and roses; / and death."  
> — **Salvatore Quasimodo** , Ancient Winter, trans. Jonathan Galassi.
> 
> " . . . the rustle of fallen leaves in my eyes."  
> — **Dulce María Loynaz** , Absolute Solitude: Selected Poems; "CIV" (tr. James O’Connor).

⚘

My mother's sumptuous panniered gowns have always enraptured me, ma petite fleur. Guipure, chantilly, silk, organza, chiffon, brocade, taffeta. A plethora of names as soft as the rose petals that caress my skin in the springtime. In my youth — before my days were occupied with chilled dawns, braying basset hounds, hunting expeditions, and diplomatic meetings to prepare me for a military career — I recall my mother reddening her cheeks with garish paint and whitening her skin with powder. Her curls have been expertly done by coiffers, adorned with pins, ribbons, and pearls. And she is beautiful with her widow's peak and vermilion lips. 

_Frivolous,_ my father calls me. _Foolish with an absentminded disposition._ A son should be not distracted by feminine whims. By romantic tales. I should not be so fascinated by my mother's gowns. Yet I can not help but be drawn in. My father suggests I be besotted with a woman instead — of good breeding, preferably. 

My father's love is a sword made of celestial fire wielded to bestow the future and legacy he wants for me. It is both beautiful and terrible. A promise and a thrall that ensnares me. It is a blood song that ensures my rise and my fall, from a time before words held any meaning to me. Before I even came to exist. 

They call me _he_ , yet I have always felt to be the opposite. I suppose I will never understand why. What I do understand is that blue blood runs through my veins and a gilded crown belongs to me. 

I press my fingers up against the pages of a book, eyes tracing and committing each word to memory so that I can recite them in the nascent twilight. 

_"Illustrious maiden fair, raven-haired beauty supine against silken sheets reminiscent of dewy petals strewn over the swan-feathered mattress. Pearls adorning her skin, embedded in supple flesh; she stares into hellfire eyes and awaits her doom, even when there is a wolf pressed up right against her throat."_

They are sinfully lovely words and I chant them like an incantation, as though they could cast a spell upon me. The courts would be disappointed to know their future monarch entertains romance by candlelight, weaving fantasies between his — _her_ — fingertips. Such folly, indeed. 

That fair maiden in the stories, softer angles yielding to harder planes as she presses her body against another, strikes something in my heart. I yearn to be that maiden, to have those snowy breasts and sensual curves, but instead of solid, lean lines against my more delicate ones, I envision someone as soft and fine-boned as me intertwining with my limbs. 

The wolf, though. Is it me or them? Which are we? I may wish to have a full figure and bee-stung lips, but do I desire my insides to reflect the outside? I find that I do not know the answer, but perhaps that is not a bad thing. 

Many a time, I feel as though I am a stranger in my own body. If a place does not automatically make a home, then is a body also the same? Sometimes, I wish I could rend my own skin to ribbons, crush my bones into fine powder to escape this hollowing feeling. I am unhappy with this body overgrown with hair and broad frame that seems to stretch across infinity. 

This reverberating voice that echoes with thunder; this face that hides a girl who cannot even call this body her own. I am filled to the brim with shame and sorrow. And it only ages like wine. 

Even in my dreams, I hide from my own eyes. I do not wish to be reminded of how I am trapped in a skin that refuses to ever be mine. 

In the half-shadow of the flame, a wizened crone slinks with the smell of oak, roses, and death. Her crooked hands offer me a single rose, gleaming and perfect. I refuse it; how can I love such beauty — accept such grandeur — when I shall never be happy with my own? 

This beldam sees into my heart and deems me unworthy. But, all the arcane knowledge in the world could never succeed in unravelling my truest desires. She does not understand, just like everyone else, and when she reveals herself in all her hallowed glory, she curses me. 

Her magic spills from her in languages, dialects of the forbidden and unknown. She shimmers at the corners of my vision, golden and bright and beautiful and _terrible_. Aureate spools to her waist, hair as luminous as her face. She transcends power; _she_ is power. 

But, she is just as cruel and blind as the others, and I do not blame her. Her curse takes ahold of me. Sleek fur eclipses my skin and my head hangs heavy with horns that spiral. My features wolfish; my nature savage. _A beast._

My castle grows cold and old, as my father and mother and _everyone_ but those turned into silver candelabras and grand pianos leave. They are afraid of the monster I have become, but if I am monstrous, why do I find relief in this change? The hunched form of a predator is more of a home than anything else has ever been. 

How peculiar. 

Over the years an eternal winter settles upon the landscape, but the roses bloom in profusion, never dying. I endure. I grow used to the claws that can slice tapestries to shreds and the voracious appetite that is unending. I become both beast at heart and in body, but I do not mind; I do not mind at all. This form is a blessing disguised as a curse. 

I do not not know how much time has passed, but one day, something changes. 

_Beauty_ comes draped in the vestiges of spring, flowering and unsure. I am full of delight, and shaking, for my want in petals and blooms all summer. _Beauty_ arrives, and the rustle of fallen leaves rouses a memory — a memory not birthed from ice and snow; it blossoms all around me, twining along my claws and horns like vines, and settles in my beastly heart with the inception of thorns. 

Roses unfurl before my eyes, ma petite fleur. It sprouts with teakwood curls that make me recall mermaids carved into the cherrywood of ship helms and eyes stained with the earth's gravid soil. Perhaps one day _Beauty_ will stay, and I will be there to deliver a dew-kissed rose to her, constant and solemn as the moon. 

For now, I hide behind a beast's skin and spin daydreams from a castle of stone. Year after year, the roses are nourished by blood, tears, and the heart of a girl who was meant to become a king.

But — do not fret, ma petite fleur, _for I will wait for your return._

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback and criticism are always welcome and in fact are encouraged. I honestly can’t believe I have to say this, but trolling and straight-up hate and negativity will not be tolerated. This may be fanfiction, but if you don’t have actual constructive criticism to give me and are just here to hate, I’m going to have to ask you to not read my works or refrain from commenting at all. Let’s all be civil people here.
> 
>  _ma petite fleur:_ my little flower in French.


End file.
